Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology (MeitY) today announced that the much awaited Smart India Hackathon
2017 Grand Finale is scheduled to be held on April 1 & 2,
2017 simultaneously at 26 different nodal centers across India. MeitY is a
‘Premier Partner’ in this initiative. Launched on Nov 9, 2016 in New
Delhi, Smart
India Hackathon 2017 harnesses creativity & expertise of students, builds
funnel for ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign, crowdsources solutions for
improving governance and quality of life, and provides opportunity to citizens
to provide innovative solutions to India’s daunting problems.

Here
is a quick snapshot of details pertaining to our ministry:

Problems
Statements proposed

Ideas
received

Shortlisted

Teams
for Grand Finale

No.
of Youngsters competing in Grand Finale

Nodal
Center for Grand Finale

Our
Ministry

21

463

52

416

Pune,
Maharashtra

Overall
event

598

7531

1266

10000+

Smt.
Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, MeitY had said that “The
idea of having Hackathon is that the students across the country have the
opportunity to contribute their creativity to solve some of the country problem
and outcome of this exercise will probably help us to actually come up with
innovative solutions of many issues which we face in India today”

Smart India Hackathon 2017 is expected
to become the ‘world’s biggest open innovation model’ that other countries can
replicate. Since Hackathon as a concept is new to India, AICTE arranged 26
awareness workshops across India to sensitized students about Smart India
Hackathon 2017. These workshops helped connect students with problems of our
nation. Out of the 7531 idea submissions received for the 598 problems posted
by 29 govt. department, 1266 ideas have been shortlisted for the ‘Grand Finale’
on April 1 & 2, 2017, during which these teams will work nonstop for 36
hours to build products based on their ideas across 26 locations in India. For
the first time, 10,000+ youngsters (6 students & 2 mentors per team) will
work non-stop for 36 hours to develop products for our nation. To ensure the
success of Smart India Hackathon 2017, multiple online training sessions have
been organized in hope of training 30,000+ students.

About
Smart India Hackathon 2017

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) under the aegis
of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and in collaboration with i4c,
MyGov, Persistent Systems, NASSCOM and Rambhau Mhalgi Pabodini is conducting a
unique initiative ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’. For the first
time ever, 29 different government ministries and departments came together and
posed 598 problem statements to 30 lakh technical students from India. During
the 36-hour Grand Finale scheduled to be held on April 1 & 2, 2017, teams of thousands of technology students will build innovative
digital solutions for problems posed by different central govt. ministries/
departments. Smart India Hackathon 2017 would be the first
massive scale hackathon initiative in India; unprecedented in the nation’s
history. Winners stand to get cash prizes and a chance to be part of the
NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups program.